Xerox PARC Map Viewer was one of the earliest static
web mapping
Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using, creating, and distributing maps on the World Wide Web (the Web), usually through the use of Web GIS, Web geographic information systems (Web GIS). A web map or an online map is both served ...
sites, developed by
Steve Putz in June 1993 at
Xerox Corporation
Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduction of the Xerox ...
's
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The Xerox PARC Map Viewer was an experiment in providing interactive
information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...
, rather than access to just static files, on the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...
.
Map Viewer used a customized
CGI server module written in
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language".
Perl was developed ...
. Map images were generated in
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...
format from two server side programs. MAP-WRITER created the
raster image
upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...
s from the geographic database and RASTOGIF would convert the raster image into the GIF format.
Xerox has since discontinued the Map Viewer service.
References
External links
About the Xerox PARC Map Viewer section from that paper describing the map server
{{Web-stub
Web mapping
Parc Map Viewer